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Okami ramble
Nov. 2nd, 2006 11:04 amOkami is a delight. Zarf called it the perfect PS2 game, in that it's published at the very end of the PS2's run (and perhaps at the end of Sony's console dominance), it has everything you'd want from a modern platformer, it's beautiful, and it's bloody enormous.
It manages to sneak in some real innovation in the corners, too. Most obviously, there's the visual style, making the world look like an animated Japanese art-scroll, everything made of thick brushstrokes and watercolors. Yes, it's just a variant of cel shading, which is nothing new, but they did a very very good job at it. I'm still discovering things about it, like the text captions floating in the sky, and the fact that if you look close you can see the grain of the "paper" in the background!
Tying into that is the wonderfully meta way that your character's divine powers manifest themselves, and I won't spoil it for you if you don't already know. (It was a surprise to me, and I loved it.) Really my only ding on it so far is that some of the cinematics run a little long. There's about 15 minutes of press-X-to-continue storytelling at the beginning before you get down to the business of actual play, and I was getting rather squirmy by the time I got my controller back. The conversations since then haven't been a problem, though.
I am especially struck by the subtle characterization of the protagonist. You control a divine animal, a white wolf invested with the powers of a Shinto sun god, but you are not so much a god yourself as an avatar. So even while you can kick monkey-demon ass and call down divine powers with a flick of the L-stick, you are also a puppydog, and do puppydog things.
There is, for example, a Bark Button. What does it do? It makes you bark. What does that do? Nothing, other than make you say "woof!" Am I nonetheless pressing it several times whenever there's nothing else going on? Yes, yes I am. There is also a Dig Holes button, which does come in handy sometimes, and you can bite people and chase animals around if you so desire. (They'll always come back; the game doesn't punish you for following doggie whims occasionally.)
You also have a dog's desire to do good by the people in the game. When you summon the powers of heaven to help an old lady get her washing done, you wag your tail gleefully while she heaps capital-P Praise on you, which acts as the game's XP. This double meaning of the word, suggesting that you receive both godly adoration and a scratch behind the ears, tickles me.
What else. oh, right, the fact that you get most of your XP not by beating up bad guys (though there's plenty of that) but by reviving the world. There are many scenes of withered trees exploding into bloom, grass and flowers bursting from the parched earth, and sparrows and happy bunnies spontaneously springing to life. And then you can feed the happy bunnies if you happen to have happy bunny food and little hearts come out of them and you get even more XP. It's crazy.
So yes, this is a good game.
It manages to sneak in some real innovation in the corners, too. Most obviously, there's the visual style, making the world look like an animated Japanese art-scroll, everything made of thick brushstrokes and watercolors. Yes, it's just a variant of cel shading, which is nothing new, but they did a very very good job at it. I'm still discovering things about it, like the text captions floating in the sky, and the fact that if you look close you can see the grain of the "paper" in the background!
Tying into that is the wonderfully meta way that your character's divine powers manifest themselves, and I won't spoil it for you if you don't already know. (It was a surprise to me, and I loved it.) Really my only ding on it so far is that some of the cinematics run a little long. There's about 15 minutes of press-X-to-continue storytelling at the beginning before you get down to the business of actual play, and I was getting rather squirmy by the time I got my controller back. The conversations since then haven't been a problem, though.
I am especially struck by the subtle characterization of the protagonist. You control a divine animal, a white wolf invested with the powers of a Shinto sun god, but you are not so much a god yourself as an avatar. So even while you can kick monkey-demon ass and call down divine powers with a flick of the L-stick, you are also a puppydog, and do puppydog things.
There is, for example, a Bark Button. What does it do? It makes you bark. What does that do? Nothing, other than make you say "woof!" Am I nonetheless pressing it several times whenever there's nothing else going on? Yes, yes I am. There is also a Dig Holes button, which does come in handy sometimes, and you can bite people and chase animals around if you so desire. (They'll always come back; the game doesn't punish you for following doggie whims occasionally.)
You also have a dog's desire to do good by the people in the game. When you summon the powers of heaven to help an old lady get her washing done, you wag your tail gleefully while she heaps capital-P Praise on you, which acts as the game's XP. This double meaning of the word, suggesting that you receive both godly adoration and a scratch behind the ears, tickles me.
What else. oh, right, the fact that you get most of your XP not by beating up bad guys (though there's plenty of that) but by reviving the world. There are many scenes of withered trees exploding into bloom, grass and flowers bursting from the parched earth, and sparrows and happy bunnies spontaneously springing to life. And then you can feed the happy bunnies if you happen to have happy bunny food and little hearts come out of them and you get even more XP. It's crazy.
So yes, this is a good game.